


Camping with a King

by TempleCloud



Series: Journey to Camelot [3]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Arthurian Mythology, Henry IV - Shakespeare
Genre: Accidental Incest, Anachronistic, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Camping, Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Hiking, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Medical Examination, Referenced Mass Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25827451
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TempleCloud/pseuds/TempleCloud
Summary: The Knight Formerly Known As Sir John Oldcastle (though not in published editions of Shakespeare) has arrived in King Arthur's time - whenever that is.  He wasn't sure what to expect there, but a horse doctor (as in a doctor who is a horse) wasn't it.  What are Arthur and Cheiron planning to do to him?
Series: Journey to Camelot [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1871695
Kudos: 15





	1. Chapter 1

There’s a perfectly simple explanation for the confusion about my name. My author, who was probably a secret Roman Catholic, had been amusing himself naming me after various Protestant martyrs, because I’m not religious and I don’t have any principles I’d miss breakfast for, let alone die for. (The original Sir John Oldcastle, my namesake, was one of the Lollard rebels beheaded in the fifteenth century.) At any rate, my author had kept having to change my name to avoid being sued for libel by the descendants of people whose names he’d used. Let’s just say, for now, that I am a knight, a fairly unsuccessful seducer, the second-most beloved gangster in English fiction (after Robin Hood, but a good way ahead of Fagin) and an outrageous liar. I had grown old (all right: even older) in the service of one of the finest writers ever, and now he had decided to kill me off. That’s entirely his decision, of course, and if he thinks anyone is going to bother going to see the sequel that doesn’t include me, he has my pity, as he is clearly losing his touch.

When King Arthur called for me, I had no idea whether this was another hallucination or a dream, or, as Malvolio thought, just my friends playing a trick on me again. I could see and hear the King, a grey-bearded man not much younger than I was, but leaner and tougher-looking and dressed in chain-mail, and I knew that I wanted to follow him, more than I had ever wanted anything. He put his hand under my arm to support me as I stumbled towards the door, and, when it opened, I found myself standing on cool, dewy grass, with the inn I’d been staying in nowhere to be seen. It was midnight, and there were more stars in the sky than I had ever seen before: so many that the famous constellations were hidden behind a cast of extras who were all determined to be noticed. I didn’t know where I was, except that I wasn’t in London, but I could put off finding out until the morning. It was probably a very beautiful scene, but in the meantime I was shivering and my teeth were chattering with a combination of sickness, cold, and fear of the unknown.

‘It’s not far now,’ the King said. ‘We’re camping just over there – where Cheiron’s got the campfire going,’ and he pointed to an orange glow a few hundred yards away. It might not seem very far to the King of the Round Table, but I dreaded walking, especially in the dark and barefoot, in long wet grass that caught around my ankles. 

‘Haven’t you got horses?’ I asked. ‘I’d have brought my bay mare, if I’d known.’ In fact, I’d had to sell my horse months ago to pay off the interest on various debts (and had then spent part of it on getting drunk, lost the rest playing dice, and forgotten all about the debts), but King Arthur wasn’t to know that.

‘I haven’t brought any with me, unless you count Cheiron,’ said the King. ‘I’m just on holiday at the moment, walking from here back to Camelot, and I don’t plan to enter any jousts or tournaments. I thought, once you were feeling better, you might want to come with me. But for now, you’d better come and get some sleep.’

So I trudged with him towards the camp, trampling countless poor slugs and snails on the way. The person called Cheiron was kneeling by the fire, but was still much taller than an ordinary man standing upright. I couldn’t see in the firelight precisely what he was, but his voice was friendly. ‘Hi, Arthur,’ he called. ‘Good evening – are you Sir John?’

‘I’m what’s left of him.’

‘Do you want a mug of tea? I’ve got the kettle on.’

‘I’d prefer wine, if you’ve got any,’ I said.

‘Afraid not. We’re a bit low on supplies right now, but there’s a town with a market on Monday. I can offer you tea, hot chocolate, or vegetable soup.’

‘Well, I’ll have chocolate, then.’

‘And I’d like a cup of tea, please,’ said Arthur. ‘Thank you, Cheiron.’

‘You’re welcome,’ said Cheiron. He helped Arthur off with his armour, and handed us our drinks, and we stood warming ourselves by the fire. I couldn’t see why a true king would venture anywhere without a good supply of wine, but at least the chocolate was hot and sweet and velvety, and my teeth had stopped chattering. Finally, Cheiron gave me a hot-water-bottle, and Arthur and I crawled into the tent beside the campfire, where there were two mats rolled out with two sleeping-bags on them. My sleeping-bag was much too narrow to wriggle into, but it turned out to be the kind that unfastens to turn into a quilt, and, as I was still shivering slightly, Arthur handed me a blanket to go on top, and a pair of thick woolly socks.

‘Well, sweet dreams,’ he said. ‘Sleep tight, good knight.’

‘No such luck!’ I muttered. ‘If there’s only tea or hot chocolate, I’ll have to learn to sleep sober.’ I wasn’t sure how long I’d survive this sort of hardship, but, for now, I fell asleep almost at once.


	2. Chapter 2

I woke much earlier than I’d intended, because sunlight was flooding through the thin fabric of the tent, and the birds were all singing different tunes to try to drown out one another’s voices. Arthur had already left the tent, leaving his mat and his sleeping-bag rolled into neat bundles. ‘When am I?’ I mumbled drowsily.

‘Early June,’ said a voice outside: the voice of the person called Cheiron whom I had met last night.

‘Apart from June?’

‘Mythological Britain, possibly any time between the 5th century and the Middle Ages, depending on who’s telling Arthur’s story. I’m from Greek mythology, myself, but I’m just visiting here. How are you feeling?’

‘Better, I think,’ I said. ‘Last night, I thought I was going to go numb from the feet up, and, when the numbness reached my heart, I’d be dead.’

‘Like Socrates,’ said the voice, with a laugh. ‘Well, it was pretty dark last night, but I don’t _think_ I got the chocolate and the hemlock mixed up. Socrates was part satyr, too, you know.’

‘Are satyrs the ones with horns and goats’ hooves?’

‘No, that’s fauns. Satyrs – the sons of Silenus – are the ones with horses’ ears and horses’ hindquarters. And I’m a centaur, which is like a satyr but with more legs, and an even worse reputation for riotous behaviour.’

I crawled out of the tent, blinking in the sunlight. We were camping in a large, grassy clearing surrounded by woodland, sloping down towards a stream. Arthur, slumped against a tree at the edge of the clearing, had probably got up early to read the Bible and say his prayers, but had fallen asleep again. Cheiron turned out to be a chestnut stallion, fifteen hands high at the withers, but, with the addition of a man’s body down to the waist, over eight feet tall in total, and powerfully built. He was bare to the waist, and had curly golden hair and a reddish beard, matching his chestnut coat and the golden tail which was swishing at flies. I tried to remember what I’d learnt of Greek mythology, a long time ago. ‘I thought centaurs were supposed to be wise and noble and valiant,’ I said.

‘Well, we’re a mixed bunch,’ said Cheiron. ‘My friend Pholus was one of the gentlest people I’ve ever known, and very learned and philosophical, but then he wasn’t a typical centaur. He was one of Silenus’s sons, and all the rest of them were satyrs like their dad, and Pholus was a bit too quiet and sober to fit in with most centaurs _or_ satyrs. I don’t think poor old Silenus quite knew what to make of him. Mind you, Papa Silenus could be profound too, sometimes, and then came out with such gloomy pronouncements that he needed another drink to make him forget them! He was an ancestor of Socrates and of Aesop, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he was your ancestor as well; you certainly look a lot like him. But as for centaurs – well, I’ve lived enough centuries to learn a fair amount, especially about healing. But most centaurs don’t live long enough to be mature. Centaur adolescence lasts five hundred years, and during that time, I’m afraid we’re such obnoxious yobs that a lot of us get killed before we’ve learnt wisdom.’

I wasn’t following most of this, but I remembered what I’d wanted to find out. ‘Am I dead?’ I asked. ‘Am I in Heaven or Hell? Or am I immortal, if I’m a satyr?’

‘Hmm – there’s no easy answer to that. You’ve died in your world, so you would be dead if you were back there, but you’re alive here, because you’re standing here talking to me. A Hindu might call it reincarnation; a Roman Catholic might say you’re passing through Purgatory. I don’t know what you’d call it.’

I shrugged. ‘Oh, well, I don’t suppose I’ll be dead for long. My author’s bound to change his mind sooner or later. He’s always having characters apparently die and then turn out to be alive after all.’

‘I’m afraid he really means it this time,’ said Cheiron gently, kneeling down and putting his arm around my shoulders. ‘Still, you’ve lived through three plays, and only been proclaimed dead in the fourth. If your author hadn’t loved you so much, he could have killed you off within three scenes, let alone three plays. That’s what all Coarse Actors want: to steal the scene in the first half, and be dead in Act Three and out of costume and in the pub by the interval.’

‘Coarse Actors with only three lines to say want that. If they could be the star, they’d want to blaze on until they burnt themselves out, and if I’m not the brightest star of all, at least I’m as round as a planet. I bet you a thousand pounds my author resurrects me by the end of the week.’

‘You haven’t _got_ a thousand pounds,’ pointed out Cheiron. ‘And I don’t think your author knew what else to do with you. He couldn’t go on writing you as a cheerful rogue who loves food and wine and sex and doesn’t worry about anything else, when he’d seen your hopes shattered and your best friend coldly rejecting you. On the other hand, he couldn’t make the two of you friends again, still clowning around together as if nothing had changed, because everything _had_ changed. On the other hoof,’ (Cheiron pawed the ground with his right foreleg) ‘he could hardly expect the audience to take you seriously as a tragic hero, could he?’

‘No, I’m not exactly the King Lear type,’ I admitted. ‘But if I’m dead and my soul’s flown to the next world, why’s it flown here in the same heavy body, with the same aches and pains? And why call it reincarnation, as if I’d been reborn as a tin of condensed milk?’

‘If you’re a relative of Socrates and of Aesop, I’m sure you’ll find the answer,’ said Cheiron. ‘But in the meantime, I ought to give you a medical check-up. I’m afraid there’s nowhere really private for it – I couldn’t fit into your tent, and there wouldn’t be enough light anyway – but if you don’t mind being examined in the open air, I don’t expect there’ll be many people passing this way, early on Sunday morning.’

‘I’m not embarrassed,’ I said. ‘But if you prick me with a needle and I flinch, it’s not because I’m afraid of cold steel, only that I’m enraged at having no sword to defend myself. You’ve heard of heroes who fear death no more than a pinprick, haven’t you? Well, I’m one of them; I hate injections just as much as I hate death!’

‘I believe you,’ said Cheiron with a smile. ‘I’ve been tutor to some of the greatest heroes who ever lived – Heracles, Jason, Achilles – and any of them would rather have fought three dragons than had one tetanus vaccination. I’m afraid I will have to take a blood sample, but I’ll try not to hurt you more than I have to. And it will hurt _less_ if you can manage to keep still and not flinch.’

So I tried to bear staunchly while Cheiron examined me from head (I may have been the first man to have his teeth examined by a horse, and informed not only was I as old as I looked, but I needed several fillings) to toe (perpetually sore from either gout or French disease; I could usually pass off my slight lameness as an authentic war-wound, but not in front of a centaur who had been healer to the Greek warriors). At last he said, ‘Well – would you rather I called you Sir John, or just John?’

‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘Jack, if you’d like.’

‘Well, Jack, whatever illness finally killed you, obviously ceased when you died in your own world. But the bad news is that you’ve still got all the underlying problems, physical and psychological, that had weakened you so that it could kill you. I’ll need to do some tests on the samples I’ve taken, but it looks as though you’ve got a couple of infections that should clear up with medicine, and I can make an ointment that should stop that rash from itching so much in the meantime. But, obviously, you need to avoid having sex until you’re fully recovered.’

‘Why?’ I demanded. It didn’t make much practical difference, as I didn’t have any money to go to a brothel, and these days I tended not to meet women who’d sleep with me for free, but I wasn’t going to be ordered around by a man who was two-thirds horse.

‘Well, it wouldn’t be very kind to pass any diseases on to a woman who might not be able to get treatment in time, would it?’

‘Oh, come on – if I go to a prostitute, I risk catching something off her, and she risks catching something off me – surely that’s a fair exchange? It’s an occupational hazard. Honestly, this is Health and Safety at Work gone mad! Anyway, apart from that, am I okay?’

‘Other than that – and I’m sure doctors in your own world have told you this – what’s mainly wrong with you stems from the facts that you eat too much, drink too much, and don’t take any exercise.’

‘No, actually they _didn’t_ tell me, because I never bothered turning up for appointments with doctors,’ I explained. ‘I’m very hard-of-listening to anything I don’t want to hear.’

‘Well, _I’m_ telling you,’ said Cheiron. ‘Your blood pressure and your resting heart rate are so high that I’m amazed you’ve got any heartbeats left.’

‘In that case, I don’t plan to waste any of them on exercising. Especially when you’ve just banned me from the one sport I enjoy.’

‘Don’t worry, Jack, you’ll be fine soon,’ said Cheiron. ‘I can mix you some medicines that should help, but for the time being, I’m afraid you’ll need to be careful what you eat, and avoid drinking alcohol at all for now. You see, some of these medicines don’t work if you’re drinking.’

I turned pleading eyes on him: eyes that would have melted the hardest heart, except, of course, that of a doctor. ‘You mean you’ve save my life only to make me _healthy_?’

‘There are lots of reasons why Arthur and I saved you,’ said Cheiron, ‘and two of them are that I love you, and that you were destined to go to be with King Arthur when you died. Talking of Arthur, I’d better wake him up now.’

‘Cheiron,’ I said, ‘you seem to know practically everything about who I am and why I’ve come here. Does Arthur?’

‘No, and I won’t tell him anything without your permission, unless it’s a matter of life and death,’ said Cheiron. ‘You can tell him as much or as little as you choose about your background, but I don’t think he’d be very shocked by anything you told him.’

By this time, the king had woken up and was walking over to join us. ‘Good morning,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I’m not being a very good host. Did you sleep well?’

‘I did until the birds started up. Are they always this noisy in the countryside?’

‘They are at dawn. They all get up early to tell each other, “Clear off my berry bush!” and “Look out, there are two humans camping in the clearing!” and then they quieten down and go and find breakfast. Speaking of which, would you like a mug of tea and some porridge?’

Considering that Arthur had saved my life, it seemed churlish to point out that only three classes of creatures live on oats, and that I wasn’t a horse or a Scot and didn’t intend to be a prisoner again. So I said, as politely as possible, ‘Well, that’s very kind, but – you wouldn’t happen to have bacon, sausages, and eggs, would you?’

‘Not at the moment, no,’ said Arthur, busy lighting a fire. ‘It’s hard to keep things fresh, travelling at this time of year, and as Cheiron’s a vegetarian, I tend to eat what he does – there’s less washing-up that way. Look at those goldfinches!’ he added in an excited whisper. ‘Aren’t they beautiful?’

‘Is it true that Merlyn turned you into a bird once, when you were a boy?’ I asked.

‘He turned me into lots of birds. The first time, he made me a falcon in the castle mews, because I was fascinated by hawks and falcons. Then I was a tawny owl, which was much more fun, because Merlyn had an owl who taught me to fly and took me to meet the goddess Athene. But being a wild goose was the best. I wish I could have married a goose, and stayed a goose all my life, migrating back and forth across the sea.’ He fetched a pan of water from the stream, frightening the goldfinches, and threw them a handful of oats and some dried currants as an apology before he set the pan over the fire.

‘It’s a pity Merlyn isn’t here now,’ I said. ‘If he could turn you into an eagle and me into a vulture and Cheiron into a hippogriff, we could fly back to Camelot in a day, instead of all this walking and camping.’

‘I like walking,’ said Arthur. ‘And anyway, the being turned into animals was only when I was a boy. I enjoyed it while it lasted, and if it hadn’t been for the lessons I’d learnt from fish and falcons and badgers, I couldn’t have grown into the man who pulled the sword from the stone and became king. But if I was to be a king of humans, I couldn’t go on being a bird or a badger or a grass-snake. I do miss Merlyn, though,’ he sighed, handing me a mug of tea. ‘Not because he could do magic for me, but because of the way he used to keep dead mice in his hat to feed his owl, and the way he grumbled when his spells didn’t work, and the way he glared at Kay and me when we were being very obtuse and refusing to think – I just miss him. I know he’d always told us that one day he’d go away, but that didn’t make it any easier when it happened. Sugar?’ added the king, handing me a screw-capped jar.

The sugar came in little cubes, of the sort that ladies pick up with sugar-tongs and say, ‘One lump or two?’ I stirred three spoonfuls of lumps into my mug, which was less than I’d have liked, but still enough to make Arthur say, ‘Go easy – that’s all the sugar we’ve got left until tomorrow,’ so I wondered why I’d bothered being polite.

‘Would you like porridge with currants in?’ he went on. ‘That might taste more interesting than just plain oats.’

‘Yes, please,’ I said, defeated. ‘Are you and Cheiron having some?’

‘No, we need to head off to church in a minute. I think the birds have quietened down now, so if you’re still tired, you can always go back to bed after breakfast.’


	3. Chapter 3

When Arthur and Cheiron were gone, I returned to the tent and tried to work out what to do next. I didn’t seem to be a prisoner, but on the other hand, travelling with a centaur who was determined to restore me to peak fitness and a king who was addicted to walking, camping, and plain food, might be far worse than being in prison, where at least I’d had a roof over my head.

So, if I was going to escape, this could be my only chance. If anyone wondered what I was doing wandering around in my dressing-gown (none of Arthur’s clothes would have fitted me, and Cheiron never wore any), I was a poor old widower who lived with my married daughter, but she was wicked and had evicted me in the middle of the night, so I was travelling to seek the mercy of my other daughter, who lived at... except that I didn’t know where I was, or what towns and villages were nearby. Well, if anyone asked any awkward questions, I was either deaf or mad, or both. And then tomorrow, I’d be a rich merchant who had been robbed of everything I possessed while I spent the night in an inn, and the innkeeper, instead of investigating the theft, had thrown me out without breakfast because I no longer had any money to pay for it!

There was a box in the tent that might contain gold, with a lock that looked so flimsy that any piece of wire would serve to pick it. Then again, did King Arthur actually have any money with him? I wasn’t sure when the tradition that kings shouldn’t carry money came in. My prince had always stood his round in the pub, and usually lent me money when it was my round, but that had been before he became king. Anyway, I wasn’t going to think about him, or about anyone in my past life. I could manage on my own.

I crept forward to the box. It wasn’t even locked, and there was a small amount of gold inside, with a map lying on top. The map showed much more forest, less farmland and fewer towns than I’d expected, and various places in the forest were labelled, ‘dragons’, ‘giants’, ‘wicked baron who flogs people with thorns’, ‘killer rabbit’, and ‘knights who say Ni!’ Most of these were crossed out, presumably because someone had dealt with the problem. There was even a route pencilled in up to the place where we were currently camped, near a small town. It looked as though King Arthur had left it there on purpose, to say, ‘There you are – if you don’t want to come with us, take what you want and clear off.’

Well, honestly! How dare Arthur assume I was such a villain that I’d steal from my hosts when they’d shown me nothing but kindness? I closed the box, and lay back on my sleeping-bag to think it through. Did I owe Arthur any allegiance? Maybe, considering he’d declared me a Knight of the Round Table last night. Should I trust him? Probably not. He’d been friendly enough this morning, but it was anyone’s guess what he’d do when he came back from church, depending on what the sermon had been about and what part of the Bible they’d been studying.

The Bible is a strange book, and I don’t see how God could have expected people to follow commandments like ‘Thou shalt not steal,’ and ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ But if there was one commandment I desperately wished I had obeyed, it was: ‘Put not thy trust in princes.’ I tried to remember where that was in the Bible: somewhere in Psalms or Proverbs, I thought. Arthur’s Bible was lying propped against his pillow. I opened it near the middle, and found myself at the beginning of the Book of Job, which is a magnificent tragedy, and one I hadn’t read for ages. People who talk about ‘the patience of Job’ should remember that Job, who could be brave through a painful disease, the death of his family, and the destruction of everything he owned, couldn’t endure his friends sitting around telling him he must have done something to deserve all his misfortunes and would be restored if he’d only repent. I know just how he felt – and Job found out that God is every bit as pissed off with religious people as Job was.

I closed the book quickly when I heard Arthur and Cheiron returning, in case they thought I was pious as well. Cheiron was in high spirits, and singing ‘To Be A Pilgrim’. ‘Hello, Jack,’ he called, as I emerged from the tent. ‘It’s a pity you couldn’t come with us this morning; the sermon was on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, and it’s one of my favourite stories.’

It was one of my favourite stories, too, but I couldn’t admit that without sounding like a prig. ‘I didn’t know centaurs went to church,’ I said.

‘Well, I can’t fit through the door. But I stood in the churchyard and listened from there.’

‘I mean, why are you a Christian, when you’re from Greek mythology?’

‘That’s exactly why I’m a Christian,’ said Cheiron. ‘I’ve seen far too much of the gods in my own family to believe in _them_. Cronos, my father, became king of the gods by castrating his own father, the Sky-Father, so then Cronos was always paranoid that one of his own children would grow up to overthrow him. He didn’t bother about me, because I’m illegitimate, but he ate my brothers Poseidon and Hades, and my sisters Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. Only my youngest brother, Zeus, escaped, and later on he disguised himself as a doctor and gave my father a medicine to make him vomit up all our other brothers and sisters. So then they chained my father up, and Zeus became king of the gods, married Hera and was continually unfaithful to her, and spent half his time quarrelling with her and the other half worrying in case another god came and usurped him. Do you realise, the reason Athene was born out of Zeus’s skull was that he’d turned her mum into a fly and swallowed her to try to stop Athene being born at all? Mind you, Athene became his favourite of all his children once we’d bandaged his skull back together after she came out. Lovely, clever girl, and her dad adores her. 

‘But you can’t worship someone like Zeus, when you’ve seen him one minute flattering his wife, and the next threatening to beat her up because she’s caught him out in a lie. So, when I heard of a God who is both a Father who loves and trusts his Son, _and_ a Son who loves and obeys his Father, _and_ is the current of love flowing between them, I knew that was the God I would worship. After all, if there aren’t any better gods than the ones in my family, God help us!’

‘I’ll have to tell Mordred he’s my son, as soon as we get home,’ sighed Arthur. ‘He’s probably guessed by now anyway. And he’s certainly guessed that I don’t really like him as much as my other nephews, and that I wish he wasn’t even my nephew, let alone my son as well, and I know he can’t stand me or Guinevere.’

‘Oh, it’s probably just a phase,’ I said soothingly. ‘Lots of teenagers stay out late, get drunk, hang out with friends you don’t approve of, and get into trouble with the police. I still do, and I haven’t been a teenager for half a century.’

‘Yes, but Mordred is thirty-eight and he wants to break up my marriage and have my wife burnt at the stake. Dear knight, do you have any children?’

‘Not that I know of.’

‘Well, supposing you’d accidentally slept with a woman you didn’t know was your sister, who was a witch, and then, many years later when you were married to someone else, your incestuous son turned up on your doorstep? What would you do?’

‘Oh, take him down to the pub, get him pissed and teach him to play strip poker, and chat up the barmaids, I expect.’

‘You wouldn’t feel ashamed?’

‘Of course not! I don’t see why there’s this prejudice that people who are bastards in birth have to be complete bastards in character as well. After all, I’m from a noble family, but I don’t behave the way a knight should.’

‘You’re a better man than I am, at any rate,’ said Arthur, ‘because I was ashamed. Oh, not about the illegitimacy – I’m illegitimate myself, and so is Cheiron, and so was Galahad, who was the noblest and purest-hearted knight who ever came to the Round Table. And even the fact that it was incest wouldn’t have been the end of the world, if I’d admitted that I’d made a mistake, acknowledged Mordred as my son when he was born, and looked after him. But instead, when I found out that I’d slept with my sister, I was so horrified at myself, and so terrified that our child was going to grow up to overthrow me, that I had all the babies born at that time killed. Mordred was the only one who survived, and now he’s got every reason to hate me.

‘It wasn’t as if I’d even meant to become king,’ he went on, with tears in his eyes, as if he was pleading for forgiveness. ‘It was only because I was trying to be a good squire to Sir Kay, when he’d left his sword at the inn and wanted to compete in a tournament and I happened to find a sword stuck in a stone. But when I found out what I was, I’d meant to try to be a good king, and then, a couple of years into my reign, I turned out to be a worse king than Herod. If I had any decency, I’d have myself beheaded, but that would mean Mordred would take over, and I hate to think of what the country would be like under him.’

There wasn’t really anything to say in consolation, but I said it anyway. ‘Look, if you’d been the best dad in the world, played football with him and read him bedtime stories every evening and taken him fishing every weekend, he’d still have gone through a phase of slamming doors and accusing you of ruining his life. It’s only natural.’

‘Yes, but I wish he’d had it when he was younger and got it over with, like chicken-pox. And I wish it wasn’t literally true that I’d ruined his life. Still,’ Arthur added, ‘I’ll have a talk with him and try to sort something out when we get home, and in the meantime, we might as well make the most of this holiday. I thought we might rest this afternoon, and go into town tomorrow morning to buy you some clothes and boots, and a sword, of course, and stock up on provisions, and have lunch in a restaurant. And after that, you’re welcome to travel with Cheiron and me if you want – we’d probably only be walking a few miles in the afternoon, so it’d give you a chance to break your boots in – but if not, of course you can go where you choose.’

‘I’ll go to the market and the apothecary while you two are clothes shopping,’ said Cheiron. ‘But I need new shoes as well, so I’ll meet you at the blacksmith’s.’

‘Do you think I’d better have a suit of armour made, as well?’ I asked.

‘You can if you want, but I don’t think you’ll really need it at the moment, and it’s heavy stuff to walk in,’ said Arthur. ‘The country’s a lot more peaceful now than it was when I came to power – I couldn’t have sent so many men out on the quest for the Holy Grail if I’d still needed them to deal with rogue barons back home. We might meet a few giants, maybe the odd small dragon, but I can generally tackle them on my own. You ought to have a sword to be on the safe side, just as Cheiron’s got his bow and arrows, but I don’t really expect to run into trouble.’

‘Oh well, you can rely on seasoned war-horses like us,’ I said. I wasn’t sure whether I was more relieved that the king didn’t want me to fight for him, or confused because I didn’t know what he wanted. If he’d been hurriedly rounding up every fighting man he could find, however old, unreliable, and irresponsible, because Mordred had destroyed the Round Table and seized power and there was war in the land – well, I’d have grumbled about not being on horseback, but I’d have marched in armour and tried to give the impression of being a willing soldier, and turned up _nearly_ in time for the battle, explaining that I would have been there earlier, but I’d had to rescue a maiden from a three-headed giant, and whenever I chopped one of its heads off, another two grew in its place, so that it was an eleven-headed giant before the maiden remembered that we needed to cauterise the neck-stumps with fire, and anyway, when the eleven-necked corpse at last lay on the ground, the maiden had implored me to make mad, passionate love to her, and though I had been sorely tempted because she was absolutely gorgeous, yet I had remembered that I was now a Knight of the Round Table and therefore devoted to chivalry and purity, and so I had spoken gravely to her like a father and counselled her to find a husband of her own age, and anyway, I was sorry I was late, and I’d try to be more attentive to my duty next time, but still, the Adventure Of The Eleven-Headed Giant _was_ going to be recorded in the chronicles, wasn’t it, and incidentally could I borrow a thousand pounds? And Arthur – would either have laughed, or been furiously angry with me and told me never to come near him again. I didn’t know him well enough to predict which.

But if he wasn’t recruiting soldiers, what was he looking for? Was he another Lear, spurned by his own offspring, turned out of doors, and needing a Fool who would keep him company even in the wind and the rain? But he seemed gentle and penitent, as un-Lear-like as any man could be, and eager to ask his son’s forgiveness. If anything, this was more like a reversed version of the Prodigal Son story – in which case, if Mordred, like Lear’s daughters, objected to his father’s choice of attendants, I might have to be sacrificed like the fatted calf.


	4. Chapter 4

I wish I could tell you of all the monsters and giants Arthur and I fought over the next few weeks, and how many times we saved each other’s lives, and how many beautiful maidens we rescued. But you, gentle reader, would never believe me, and you’d be quite right. We didn’t have any adventures, unless you count my struggle to keep walking, Arthur’s battle with guilt, and Cheiron’s efforts to look after us.

We did see several dragons, but only small ones the size of foxes, sunning themselves on the road, who scuttled into the undergrowth when they heard the clank of Arthur’s armour and the thud of Cheiron’s hooves. Once we came upon one that was sleeping too soundly to notice us, curled up with its spiny neck and tail woven around each other so that its snout was resting on its haunches and the bunch of spikes on its tail-tip were under its front paws. I drew my sword to stab it before it woke, but Arthur said, ‘Leave it alone! It’s not doing you any harm, is it?’

‘But I thought knights were supposed to kill dragons,’ I protested. ‘And if I wasn’t a very valiant knight back in my world, probably it was because there weren’t any dragons left to fight by the fifteenth century, so, now I’m here, I ought to practise.’ As I blustered on, my brain stood by incredulously, watching my mouth make a fool of itself. What if Arthur called my bluff by commanding me to fight a gigantic dragon that was awake, sixty feet long, and trying to fry me alive? Probably he knew that I’d just been trying to impress him with how brave I was, and now he thought me even more of a coward for offering to kill a sleeping foe.

‘The big ones are nearly extinct even now, at least in this area,’ said Arthur. ‘There are some of the red ones left in Wales, but they mostly eat coal and sheep rather than maidens. And the biggest species – which was flightless, didn’t breathe fire, and only ate trees – was hunted to extinction centuries ago by big-game hunters who couldn’t tell one kind of dragon from another. But these little shimmering blue-green ones with the lacy black wings don’t grow much bigger than this, and if they’re in plain view, it’s generally best to let them sleep. When you need to go into the bushes, though, it’s a good idea to poke around the bracken with a stick – you might startle a sleeping dragon, but that’s a lot better than accidentally treading on one. They can scorch your ankles quite nastily, if you’re not careful.’

If the dragons didn’t give us any trouble, the insects made up for it. The midges and mosquitoes bit us, but the clouds of gnats who followed us for miles on end were nearly as bad, flying into our eyes or up our noses or drowning themselves in anything we ate or drank. Admittedly, I’d been grumbling about the lack of meat, but I didn’t think barley and gnat stew with midge tea was worth the additional protein. Cheiron, because he had two bodies and no clothes, suffered the most, swishing his tail at the horseflies around his hindquarters, while using his hands to waft the midges from his face, which left his withers and forelegs undefended.

The weather was growing hotter and we were constantly drenched in sweat, which encouraged the insects even more. Whenever we passed a spring or stream, Cheiron, whose centaur senses were sharper than ours, would decide whether the water was safe to drink fresh or only after boiling, and then, when we had drunk and refilled our water bottles, Cheiron and I poured water over ourselves. This didn’t stop the insects scenting us, but did mean that, for the next quarter-hour or so, those who flew into us would drown in spring water rather than sticky sweat, which was probably a cleaner death. Arthur, who couldn’t splash himself with water for fear of rusting his armour, kept wiping his brow with a large handkerchief, and said nothing.

We made very slow progress, especially in the first couple of weeks after I joined Arthur and Cheiron. They could have walked twenty miles a day, but I was struggling to cope with a third of that. We broke camp and set off early each morning, before it was too hot, and walked three or four miles, frequently stopping so that I could catch my breath, or sit down on a fallen tree, or ask, ‘Have we got a very long way to go?’ At this rate, by the time we’d found a comfortable place to lie down in the shade, and I was groaning in pain and barely able to take another step, and even Arthur had to admit that one or two of his bones were creaking a bit, it would be lunchtime, so we would collapse for a few minutes to recover our strength, then eat.

After lunch, we took a siesta that lasted all afternoon, and woke to walk a few more miles in the coolth of evening. Long before it was dark, we would decide we couldn’t manage to go any further, so we found a campsite and pitched the tent, and Arthur and I took off our boots and checked each other’s feet for blisters and Cheiron’s hooves for stones. Then it was time to light a fire, cook dinner and eat it, and tell each other stories before retreating into our sleeping-bags. The next day, the whole thing happened all over again.

It was a life as routine-laden as a child’s, complete with afternoon naps and bedtime stories. But then, when you are dropped into a different world, with no idea how things are done there, or what is or isn’t dangerous, you are a child, depending on people who know their way around that world to teach you and protect you. Arthur and Cheiron were good foster-parents to me, and, after all, isn’t it better to be loved like a child than hated and rejected like a man?

After a while, I began to notice that I was coping better with the journey. I wasn’t getting out of breath as quickly, and by the end of the day I wasn’t aching all over my body, but only in selected areas. Arthur seemed less anxious over whether I was going to survive, and, instead of fussing over whether I was feeling all right, would say casually, ‘We’ve made a fair distance this morning,’ or, ‘It’s good to be up on the high ground, isn’t it? We’ve left the flies down by the stream.’ And I’d look down at the meadow where we’d camped last night, and realise that a month ago I could never have attempted to climb a hill like that, and couldn’t have squeezed through the kissing-gate at the edge of the meadow anyway.

Cheiron seemed pleased with my progress, but I was still his patient, and he continued to be very strict about what I wasn’t allowed to eat or drink (again, it was like being back in the nursery). On Saturdays, we usually arranged to camp near a town or village with a church, so that we could go to church on Sunday. Before a church service, Arthur would explain quietly to the priest that, as a penance, he had taken a vow that he and his companions would not taste wine during this journey, so would it be all right if we were given only bread at Communion? This was a bit of a fib, but Arthur was hardly going to say, ‘I don’t trust this follower of mine not to swig down the entire chalice and demand a refill.’

Most priests agreed cheerfully. Some asked whether we’d like them to pray for us after the service for any problems we had. One admitted that he served beetroot juice instead of wine, as so many of his parishioners suffered from damaged livers, and that he hoped God didn’t mind. And one, who evidently hadn’t recognised King Arthur, told us that if we had so little faith, we should think about whether we ought to be taking Communion at all.

Arthur asked whether we could come in to hear the sermon, pray, and sing hymns, but stay in our pew during Communion, but Cheiron decided to help him. ‘My friend has faith coming out of his ears,’ he said, ‘but he’s doing this to give me moral support. You must have heard how centaurs go mad at the mere smell of wine, let alone the taste of it, and start attacking everyone and everything, and he wants to help me behave myself.’

‘That’s right,’ I said, ‘and I’m part satyr, so the same goes for me. I’m mostly human, but we mixed creatures have to be careful, you know.’

The priest frowned. ‘Do you know why Christ was incarnate as a man born of woman?’ he asked Arthur.

‘Wasn’t it to save us from our sins?’ said Arthur.

‘Exactly! To save men and women from their sins, because God made men and women in His own image. Not centaurs. Not satyrs. Not trolls or dwarves or hobgoblins. Those creatures don’t have souls to save. If you’re human, you can come in, but I’d rather you left your animals in the churchyard.’

Arthur blushed deeply, and glanced at me to see whether I was hurt. Seeing that I was on the verge of laughter rather than tears, he turned back to the priest and said, ‘Thank you, but I don’t think I could be responsible for my pets if I left them unattended. I’ll take them back to their stable.’ The three of us set off back towards the campsite, and tried to make sure we were out of earshot of the churchyard before bursting out laughing.

‘“Leave your animals in the churchyard”!’ repeated Cheiron. ‘How did he know we weren’t going to eat the flowers off the graves?’

‘You quite often stay outside anyway, if the door’s a bit low,’ I pointed out.

‘Yes, but then the priest brings the Communion bread out to me, after serving the crippled grannies in the back pew,’ said Cheiron. ‘Well, at three thousand years old, it’s not surprising if I’m disabled!’ He stamped his four chestnut legs, all gleaming with health and vigour.

‘Anyway, if I haven’t got a soul, I can’t be held responsible for my actions,’ I said. ‘In which case, there are a few judges I could sue for false imprisonment.’

‘Come on, Jack, we all know you’ve got a soul,’ said Arthur.

‘Yes, but it’s worn through in places – needs cobbling back together,’ I said.

‘Oh well, if you hadn’t admitted to being part satyr, the priest might have let us sit in for the first hymn before sending us off to Sunday school.’

‘I dare you to go back and show him who you are!’ I said. ‘Be austere and terrible in majesty; tell that churlish priest you’ve made me Prime Minister and Cheiron Archbishop of Canterbury, and then let us demand to know what he has to say for himself. And then we’ll put him in the stocks in a dungeon overnight, and in the morning – or in two or three days, if we feel like it – we can decide to be very magnanimous and let him go, but only if he kisses Cheiron’s hooves.’

‘Oh, don’t be daft!’ said Arthur, laughing. ‘What kind of a king would I be, if I used my power to bully anyone who was rude to me?’

‘You’re not a king, you’re a Monarch, because you’re amused,’ I said. ‘In my world, anyone who was crowned king or queen immediately had to vow to be Good but Not Amused. So it was a pig of a job to force on anyone who’d had a sense of humour before he was king, because the only people having any fun were the ones having slanging matches in scruffy pubs. I used to have a really cool friend called Hal who just happened to be the King’s oldest son, and his father didn’t approve of me – partly because he thought I was a bad influence because I was older than Hal and because I drank too much and because I was a thief, but those weren’t reasons, they were just excuses. Hal’s dad didn’t disapprove of his having disreputable friends, he just disapproved of his having friends, full stop. Every time Hal went home, he got the full nag: “Don’t you realise that if you have a social life like a normal teenager, people will think you _are_ a normal person, and then they won’t be impressed with you, just the way they weren’t with the king before me, which was why I was able to get rid of him, but you’ve had it soft, why can’t you be a self-made man like me, what have I done to be landed with a wastrel like you for a son, what wouldn’t I give to find out that you weren’t my son after all, oh I know you’re just waiting for me to drop dead so you can have things all your own way, and why is it that you seem to prefer being anywhere else rather than at home?”’

‘We dads always get things wrong,’ said Arthur. ‘Obviously, I’ve been a much worse father to Mordred than your friend’s father was to him, but sometimes I think there isn’t a right way to be a parent, just a very wide choice of wrong ways. I know I was much luckier in my own childhood, because I was placed with a foster family, and no-one except Merlyn knew that I was the heir. I just assumed that I was going to spend my life being squire to Sir Kay, and if we couldn’t be as close friends when I was his squire as when we’d just been brothers playing and fighting and getting into mischief together, at least I could still love him and serve him.’

‘Why were you with a foster family, though?’ I asked. ‘Were your own parents that bad?’

‘My father was. You see, my own birth is much worse than Mordred’s. He’s illegitimate, and the result of incest, but I was the result of rape. My father, King Uther Pendragon, made war against the Earl and Countess of Cornwall, murdered the Earl of Cornwall and raped his wife, the Countess Igraine, who gave birth to me. Well, having me to look after must have reminded her of everything she’d suffered, and she couldn’t bear it, so Merlyn took me away, and so Sir Ector and his wife looked after me along with their little boy, Kay. 

‘And then, of course, when we were a bit bigger and Sir Ector was starting to worry about finding a school for us, Merlyn came back to be our tutor, but he protected me from knowing who I was. So he couldn’t tell me that the Countess Igraine’s three daughters, Morgan Le Fay, Elaine, and Morgause, were my half-sisters. And they were all much older than me, anyway, so that it didn’t occur to me that they might be my sisters. Morgause’s four older sons – Gawain, Agravain, Gaheris, and Gareth – are only a few years younger than I am, and then there’s about an eleven-year gap, and then – well, I met Morgause, when I was eighteen and had just defeated her husband, King Lot of Orkney, and she’d come to visit me to ask me to be merciful to him. I don’t think I was quite as wicked _then_ as my father – at least I didn’t kill King Lot or rape Morgause – but somehow we wound up sleeping together anyway, and Morgause gave birth to Mordred, and I turned out to be far more evil than my father, when I drowned an entire ship-load of innocent children just to try to kill my own son. I don’t see how I can ever put things right, after that. Were your friend and his father ever reconciled, do you know?’

‘I don’t want to talk about them for now,’ I said. ‘Can’t you tell me a cheerful story instead? One that isn’t full of death and guilt?’

‘I’ll try. Have you read the story of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?’

‘Not exactly.’ There had been a poem about Sir Gawain published in my time, and the reviews had said that, with so many modern poets like Chaucer indulging the fad for rhymed poetry, it was refreshing to see the Pearl Poet reviving English alliterative epic in a work which would still be being read when crowd-pleasers like _The Canterbury Tales_ were long forgotten. Which seemed fairly clear reviewer-speak for ‘It’s unreadable.’ But Arthur was beginning his version...


End file.
